


Changeling

by Schadenfreudah



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:02:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28638969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schadenfreudah/pseuds/Schadenfreudah
Summary: Ryou stares at his brother. Something else stares back.
Relationships: Bakura Ryou/Yami Bakura
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31
Collections: BIAT_Exchanges





	Changeling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jyamu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jyamu/gifts).



> Written for the BIAT server exchange for Mr. Satou! I hope this isn't too creepy and weird for your tastes — and that it meets your expectations. This was a lot of fun so thank you!

Ryou sits at the curb, legs tucked under himself, backpack clutched in his lap. In front of him, cars of all different sorts and colours, but mostly greys and browns, pass by. He can hear faint voices and the scuff of shoes on the pavement behind him, spilling from Domino High’s open doors.

He’s almost tempted to turn and look at the students behind him. He knows if he does he would be on the receiving end of a few smiles. Ryou is well-liked, if only because of how mild he is. He supposes it makes sense, why people wave at him in the halls, affirm his presence with perfunctory nods of acknowledgement. Milquetoast is an appealing flavour when the alternative is the unkempt boys who fight in the parking lot and gather on the staircases to peer up their classmates’ skirts. Of course, they don’t really know anything about him, nor do they want to. It’s a transitory sort of affection, which Ryou sinks into comfortably. It suits him.

The thought scatters to the wind when the beat up, familiar old car he’s been waiting for pulls up in front of him. After a moment, the dirt-speckled window rolls down. Ryou’s grip on his bag tightens, and he swallows, just once, before he forces himself to look up.

His brother’s face is nothing but a face. Ryou doesn’t know why he would have expected otherwise. “We’re going to be late,” Bakura says, without preface. “Hurry up and get in.”

Ryou doesn’t dare say that he had been there on time, that Bakura had been the one to keep him waiting. He doesn’t dare say that it doesn’t matter if they’re late, or that no one will be there to miss them either way, that no one will be waiting for Bakura as Ryou waits for him. He doesn’t dare say anything at all.

With a nod, Ryou rises on tentative legs — his feet have fallen asleep — and walks on pins and needles to the passenger side.

—

They drive two hours to get there. And it’s still a shitty church.

Ryou has been told that it had been his mother’s favourite when she was still alive, but as he trails after Bakura down the path of the alleyway, shoes squelching in half melted snow, he thinks for the thousandth time how unlikely it is that anyone would call such a miserable place their favourite.

The building is at the alley’s end, out of the car’s reach. The tragic looking bulletin board off to the side has begun to sink into the muddy ground, shrouded in the shadows of the trees that threaten to swallow it up. The notices clinging to it are old, years out of date. Ryou knows even from a few feet away because he checks them every Friday wondering, whether someone has benchmarked the passage of time, whether anyone at all has considered that he would be keeping track. He checks them so often that he’s memorised the flyers’ faded colours.

A little bit ahead, Bakura strides up the stairs into the shadowy veranda, a seventh slender silhouette joining the columns that frame the church’s entrance. Ryou hurries after him, anxious not to let him disappear out of sight. He takes the stairs two at a time and follows Bakura inside, through the double doors, and lets them shut definitively behind him.

Bakura stands at the bottom of the altar’s steps. His face — which is still just a face, nothing more, nothing less, and why _would_ it be anything other than a face — is in harsh relief in their cage of stained glass. The thick windows cast the room, darkened by the onset of evening, in the primordial colours of all that has been holy. Illuminated by only these saintly reflections, because the candles at the altar are long since burnt out, the set of Bakura’s angular features fascinates Ryou.

With a low exhale, Ryou slides into an empty pew near the front of the room, only one among the rows of identical, unoccupied benches. There’s never anyone else here when they visit — this place, at this time, belongs only the two of them. In the shadow of the forest, he and Bakura spend their afternoons alone together in their private house of worship.

Usually, neither of them speaks during Bakura’s long moment of ardent admiration. But this time Bakura clears his throat. The sounds disrupts the silence that has fallen upon the church.

“You should come up,” Bakura he says, without turning. “She wants to speak to you. She doesn’t like me, you know.”

Ryou shakes his head. “I can’t,” he says. He wouldn’t know what to say to her even if he could commune with her as Bakura can. He hates imagining her beseeching look, her small fingers clutching at him, pulling him to her doll-like body. Even the thought of it makes him nauseous.

Bakura lets out a low hum. “Hear that,” he says aloud, for Ryou’s benefit rather than for hers. They don’t need to speak using words audible to human ears. “He doesn’t want to talk to you.” He pauses, listening, and then says — a derisive edge to his voice — “I’m not such a bad conversation partner, am I?”

Ryou’s lids slip shut. His hands, knotted in his lap, still feel sticky with her hot blood. Her pale ripped-open throat soaks onto the carpet of his dreams. Bakura’s face, which is just an ordinary face, peers up at him. Her essence oozes from his lips, bubbling from his mouth, dripping as casually as the juice of a ripe plum down the column of his throat.

Ryou can remember in vivid detail the night his brother had murdered Amane. Bakura had looked up at him from where he was crouched over her body, pallid in the feverish dark of that time past midnight, and said nothing.

“Let’s go, Bakura,” he says at last, quietly. His thoughts have wandered from the living room back into the church. “I want to make dinner before it gets too late.”

Bakura smiles. “Such a conscientious brother,” he says, and, hands shoved in his pockets, turns to leave.

Without another look at the altar, Ryou follows.

—

Dinner is a utilitarian affair. Ryou likes cooking, but Bakura isn’t picky, and it doesn’t take much to satisfy his meagre appetite. He’s standing at the stove to watch the water boil, waiting to drop the noodles in, but right now he takes a moment to survey their apartment. It smells like smoke, so thick in the air Ryou wants to cough. He would if he doesn't think it will annoy Bakura so much.

His brother lounges on the couch, smoking lazily, watching something on the TV with glazed-over eyes. It’s an old TV — Bakura had salvaged it from the house, had dragged it out onto the lawn and propped it up against the car with a sort of pride that hadn’t become him very well.

“See, Ryou,” he had pronounced, grandly, with a sweep of his arm. “Don’t say I never do anything for you.”

Ryou had bitten his nails down to stumps, hands swathed in the sleeves of his ratty jumper. “I never said that,” he had mumbled. “Quit it.”

The TV hadn’t really been for Ryou. Bakura, since he hardly leaves the house now, uses it more than he does. It’s constantly on, constantly blaring, muddying the apartment with layers of voices and technicolour and commercial breaks. Actually, Ryou thinks he might hate it. But since Bakura likes it, it stays on.

In the here and now, Bakura looks over at him, and takes a long drag. When he purses his lips and exhales, a ring of smoke bubbles out into the air. “C’mere,” he says. “It still has a few minutes to go. Keep me company.”

Obediently, Ryou shuffles toward him, arms wrapped around his middle. He sits down next to Bakura, close enough that it will appease him but far away enough that he has his space.

But Bakura isn’t in the mood for distance today. His arm snags around Ryou’s hips and pulls him to his chest, so the rigid line of his back is pressed against Bakura’s front. Against his spine, Ryou feels nothing — no breath, no heartbeat, no warmth. 

“Stop it,” Ryou whispers. He feels like he’s on the lawn, looking at that dusty, ugly TV buried in unkempt grass. “I’m tired.”

Bakura mouths at his neck, his teeth dragging over Ryou’s unmottled flesh. His tongue darts out to taste the sweat that’s built up at his nape. Slipping under the hem of his shirt, Bakura’s cold hands trace the shell of his ribs.

“The water,” Ryou manages, and shifts away. “It’s boiling, Bakura, come on.”

With a sigh, Bakura releases him. Ryou stands on unsteady legs and wobbles back toward the kitchen. From over his shoulder, he can see Bakura raising the cigarette to his lips again and sucking the smoke into his lungs.

Ryou hopes it kills him, but he knows it can’t. There’s no use killing something that’s already dead.

—

The lights are out, and Ryou’s feet are cold against the wooden floorboards as he descends the stairs. His hands slip down the rail, nails dragging against the cool metal, and little flakes come off beneath them.

“Amane,” he calls into the darkness, as he steps onto the ground. “Come back up, ok? It’s late, we have school tomorrow.”

When she doesn’t reply, he stumbles toward the light switch, flicking it on in a lazy, sleepy gesture. Ryou blinks, squinting as the room floods with light, and then — quickly — his eyes land on the creature at the centre of the room.

Bakura looks at him. His mouth drips with blood. His face is not a face — it’s a maw, an emptiness, a chasm.

Bakura is a chasm.

Bakura is nothing.

—

“What are you?” Ryou breathes into the hollow of Bakura’s collarbone when dinner’s done and he's cleared up. In their bed, Bakura crushes Ryou in his embrace. His body is sore — Bakura had pressed him into the mattress, sharp teeth digging with punishing force into his skin while he took him. “You’re not my brother.”

Bakura laughs. “Aren’t I?” he murmurs, and they lie together in silence, neither of them sleeping, until the sun rises and routine is restored.


End file.
